Doctrine and Covenants 163
Commentary Series

Confess and Repent

by David R. Brock

It is not pleasing to God when any passage of scripture is used to diminish or oppress races, genders, or classes of human beings. Much physical and emotional violence has been done to some of God’s beloved children through the misuse of scripture. The church is called to confess and repent of such attitudes and practices.—Doctrine and Covenants 163:7c

During my early teens, someone gave my father a document about the curse of Noah’s son, Ham, in the Hebrew Scripture (Old Testament). It sought to prove that dark-skinned races were a result of God’s curse. During that time, the early 1960s, Americans questioned racial segregation and increasingly affirmed civil rights. At the same time, scripture was frequently misused to argue for keeping a system in place that we now affirm was being dismantled by God’s liberating Spirit as a horrible wall of separation and division.
That moment was my first major encounter with scriptural interpretation. When I picked up the document on the curse of Ham, which made what seemed to be rational arguments based on Holy Scripture, I felt I dared not question the “Word of God.”

My dad said the document was “poppycock.” He said the author didn’t know what he was talking about. Dad’s direct response and explanation was just what I needed. It freed me to question, analyze, and interpret. Not only that, but I began to understand I was required to do so!

Though it was far from systematic at that point in my life, a model of scriptural interpretation was beginning to emerge. Guideposts for reading Holy Scripture were being put in place:

Scripture can’t be used to oppress or control other people. God is no respecter of persons. “Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in [God’s] sight” (“Jesus Loves the Little Children,” Hymns of the Saints #223). If God loves all people our job is to uphold the worth of everyone.

Scripture is treasure in an earthen vessel. Revelation of God is found there, but it comes through humans—amazing, but imperfect and flawed humans. It reflects the times and cultures and languages of the many voices heard within its pages. It is not inerrant.

Scripture is best interpreted through the life and teachings of Jesus, who came to serve, to break down dividing walls, to heal, to share good news, to instill hope, to save.

Scriptural interpretation is dependent on experience, tradition, and scholarship. We pay attention to our own life experience. We draw from the wisdom of our forebearers, who interpreted the same writings in their day. We use our own intellectual ability and the latest discoveries and insights of the best minds.

Scripture is illuminated by God’s Spirit working within us—if we are attentive and receptive enough. The same Spirit that moved on the waters at creation moves in our hearts and minds to guide and direct us today.

So much confusion and fear result from misinterpretation of scripture that one wonders at times if we dare enter the territory:

• Words of Pauline letters used to keep women “in their place”

• Laws in Leviticus quoted to mete out punishment for the homosexual

• Prophecies in Daniel and Revelation misapplied to today, going so far as to name the Anti-Christ and predict the hour and day of Armageddon

• Citations from both testaments that “prove” the poor are poor because that is part of God’s plan, or they’ve brought it on themselves

• Book of Mormon quotes implying the Roman Catholic Church is “the great and abominable church”

• Arguments that the New Testament letters show the acceptability of slavery, or explain that the Jews have suffered throughout history because they never accepted Jesus as the Christ

• Genesis accounts of creation used to brand scientists (like Galileo) who believe the universe is 15 billion years old as “destroyers of the faith”. And on it goes.

But, alas, I am confessing what I consider the faults of others whom I believe misinterpret scripture. I’m quite proud of myself, frankly, that I do not use scripture to advance sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, creationism, apocalypticism, or salvation for me and mine over against the rest of creation. That sounds a lot like the man in the Jerusalem Temple who prayed loudly in a prominent place for all to hear and admire, “Thank you, God, that I am not like those other people!” Jesus was not impressed!

This scripture asks me to confess my sins, not the sins of others. What about me? What is God asking me to confess and repent of in my misuse of scripture? It likely remains for other sisters and brothers and spiritual companions to guide me through my own blindness to a place of confession and repentance. Meanwhile, I’m beginning to make out some added guideposts that God may be placing along my path.

The answer to misuse of scripture is not to abandon it. Rather, it calls us to go deeper into it: to argue with it as Jonah “argues” with Ezra in the Old Testament about the “chosen” race; to note the different emphasis between John’s interpretation of Jesus’ words and Mark’s interpretation of those same words in the New Testament Gospels.

The answer is to grapple with scripture in the tradition of the rabbis, who reached a tough ethical decision only after weeks or months of discussion about a word or a phrase. The answer is to deal with new insights the way Jesus did: “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you….”

Like Jacob who crossed the stream of Jabbock to wrestle with the angel the night before he was to reunite with his brother Esau, we wrestle with the text until it reveals its divine name. Then, like Jacob, we limp toward the rising sun, “wounded” by our encounter with God (see Genesis 32:22–32).

I am guided to the work of dedicated scholars who have translated from ancient manuscripts in Hebrew and Greek. I am challenged to keep a Bible dictionary at hand, to read F. Henry Edwards’s commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants, to read deeply in the writings of Geoff Spencer and Tony Chvala Smith and many modern scholars who help me understand the historical context of scriptures about slavery, the role of women, or human sexuality.

But I confess that sometimes I use the work of others and my own intellect to distance myself from applying the scripture directly to my daily life. Reading about scripture allows me to stand over it, rather than to “stand under,” to “understand” what it is saying to me, asking of me, calling me to be and do. Somewhere in the writings of F. Henry Edwards, as he calls us to study all good books, he pleads with the reader to read the scripture itself: “Read the commentaries and the dictionaries, but above all read and study and live in the words of the text until they get inside you and do their work.”

I don’t know about your congregation, but I sometimes catch myself thinking there are some sisters and brothers in my congregation who just don’t seem as wise as I am about certain scripture passages. As a result I’m tempted to use my sermon or my “brilliant” contribution during class to set them straight on what God really is saying in a certain passage. God is asking me to repent of that attitude. God is asking me to listen deeply enough, to love truly enough that I can understand what in a life experience has led to a particular interpretation that I find wrong or even harmful.

My task is not to argue another into the truth as I see it. Rather, I am to care enough and listen enough that we eventually get to a safe place where new insights and healing might emerge between us and in both of us. That won’t always happen, but there is much untapped potential in those kinds of encounters. If I could pledge that I can argue forcefully in class only if I can, at the end, give a genuine handshake and hug and proclaim genuine love for another brother or sister, we might be a stronger community.

This passage of scripture asks me to listen to those wounded by misuse of scripture and to let the anger and hurt pour out without becoming defensive or without trying to fix it. I have heard African Americans and Africans who were “wounded in the house of their friends” because of misuse of scripture and wish I did not know what has happened in our own Community of Christ.

I was denied the use of a Native American poet’s poem at a Temple conference because of her deep anger toward Christianity and her sense of how it had decimated her own culture. I’ve heard the poor and suffering quote words of scripture to blame themselves or another for tragedy in their family—as if their lack of faith in God, or their sinful act or that of someone else, was the reason God had taken their loved one by disease or accident. People of financial wealth have been marginalized and unfairly labeled with words of scripture. I know, because I have done it myself.

There is no easy way to apply ancient texts, or even modern counsel in the latest sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, to our daily living. It takes time and struggle and wrestling with the text and ourselves. We’ll debate and disagree, as we should. But I believe that as I read from that library of God’s encounter with humankind (God’s search for us and our attempt to flee, to find, to be found) that I meet myself in the stories of the flawed who suffer and cause suffering because of their waywardness. Yet God can still invite us all to share in the peaceable kingdom. I believe God’s word is indeed a lamp to my feet and a light on my winding path toward truth.

Make me aware, God, of ways I have diminished the life of another through the misuse of scripture. Do not let me turn away from realities I would rather not notice in myself and in Community of Christ. Help me feel what others feel when sacred text is used to exclude. Help me see my own loss of life and love in attitudes and practices that diminish others. Then, send me, like Jonah, if you must, to a Nineveh to which I do not want to go. Send me, because in my best moments I know that my welfare depends on their welfare. Amen